The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie Page A

into his face, and he began to stammer out an apology.
    â€˜Well, and what are you doing here?’ Penworth said in a friendly way, coming to stand by him. Charles let his strong broad fingers take the book out of his hands.
    â€˜H’m; you’re not doing any harm reading that, anyhow.’ Penworth was pleasantly decided, and Charles felt again how well he liked this cultured, easy man, who could make even Greek syntax seem a matter for smiles and small excitements.
    â€˜What do you think of it?’ Penworth asked. Then he laughed and said, ‘No—don’t bother; schoolmasters spoil things when they start asking questions. And this is Sunday, anyhow. Read it and enjoy it alone. Nothing is nicer.’
    He sat down, and Charles remained where he was standing, feeling happy that he had been surprised in such a way by such a man. Penworth was looking up at him, cocking an eye under the fine arches of his brows. From the bays of his wide temples Charles could see how the hair was already receding, as though into the bays of a coastline a tide were being sent.
    His smile was weary and pleasing at first. Then, as he talked and looked at Charles, it became deeper and more lively. He confounded the heat…Charles listened to the colourful cadences of his voice with half-unheeding content; he was still wrapped in unfinished thoughts about the play he had been reading, and parts of it came into his mind surprisingly, and were confused with Penworth’s idle words.
    â€˜â€¦just between twelve and one, e’en at turning o’ the tide: for after I saw him fumble at the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of green fields…So ’a bade me lay more clothes on his feet…just between twelve and one, e’en at turning o’ the tide…’a babbled of green fields…’
    Penworth ceased talking abruptly.
    â€˜You weren’t listening,’ he said; but his smile smoothed the abruptness of the words.
    â€˜Yes, sir—oh, yes, I was listening,’ Charles said, feeling his face become hot. ‘But that play too…it…’
    â€˜â€¦kinda gets yer, eh? As your friends outside would say.’
    As he said this Penworth quite carelessly put out his hand and gripped Charles’s leg firmly above the knee. His palm was warm but dry; Charles hardly noticed it in his relief at not being thought rude. The gentle fingers slid slowly upwards under the short trouser leg; they touched Charles like moths, in sensitive places, for hardly a second, and then as slowly slid down again. Penworth had not spoken; he was looking into Charles’s eyes, and smiling. His smile was in his eyes, too, as though turned inward to deride himself. He withdrew his hand and let it fall upon his knee.
    For a moment the silence was hot and intense. Then Penworth stretched his arms up, and pulled his head back, yawning so that the skin creased down his flat, healthy cheeks. He still looked at Charles, sideways, and raised one eyebrow as though he would have said, ‘Well, what fools all of us are’. Charles laughed. He had already forgotten the caressive touch, which had seemed almost as dispassionate as the touch of his own hand upon a sheet of paper.
    â€˜It makes one wish to live like some rich Greek of centuries ago,’ Penworth said, when his yawn was ended in a gasp of breath. ‘This climate of yours, I mean. To bathe and hunt and go to the games, and in the evening walk about in public places, and converse like men. That was the life. But different ages, different conventions. Different moralities.’ And he added darkly, ‘Intelligent men must work like any slaves, with starved souls’.
    He stood up, sighing. ‘I suppose you don’t trouble about what I mean. Why should you? Anyhow, we can’t put the clock back as far